Customer Reviews

Winesburg, Ohio

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sherwood Anderson's one great book contains the moving stories of the odd characters of one small American Midwest tone. His exact and lyrical pictures of this world gave new meaning to the depiction of the everyday in American Literature.

I'm ashamed to say that I avoided this book for decades - decades! - based soley on a cover. My mother had the book on her bookshelves, an older edition with a painting of a turn of the century couple courting on the front. It looked vaguely impressionist, and left me to conclude that the stories inside would probably be a bunch of sentimentalist claptrap. How wrong I was!

The book inside is more akin to a Hopper painting than a Degas. Anderson manages an amazing level of character development within the short stories. The stories themselves work independently, but also work together to tell the story of an American Midwestern town. And the feeling one is left with is that everything you have read is essentially and authentically American.

To comment on the Kindle version specifically, it seems well formatted to this reader. I've noticed a typo here and there, but nothing glaring, and nothing that distracts from the experience of reading the book.

First published in 1919, Winesburg, Ohio is a collection of 22 interrelated stories set in a fictional small town in the American Midwest. Though each story can stand alone as an individual work, they are so closely interwoven that some consider the book to be a novel. The protagonist of each story often makes a supporting appearance in the tale of his or her neighbor, relative, friend, or lover, while dozens of other characters are encountered only in brief cameos. George Willard, a young reporter for the local newspaper, appears in almost all the stories and unifies the various tales into a cohesive book. Everyone in town seems to consider him a kindred spirit, and they seek him out, asking him to serve as their confessor, chronicler, and/or psychiatrist.

In deceptively simple prose, Anderson vividly captures the everyday life of this small Ohio town during its period of transition from agrarianism to modern industrialization. The denizens of Winesburg struggle to find their place in this microcosm of modern society. Their sensitive souls are tormented by loneliness, isolation, guilt-ridden pasts, frustrated dreams, and a stifling ability to communicate their feelings and aspirations. Sinclair Lewis's novel Main Street, published about the same time and also focusing on a Midwestern town, features an ambitious dreamer, Carrie Meeber, who envisions herself a prisoner within a conservative small town full of narrow minded bumpkins. In Winesburg, Ohio, everyone is Carrie Meeber. Everyone is a prisoner to something, and everyone wants out. For many of the characters, the big city represents salvation, as if their problems would just go away if they could escape to Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Chicago. More often than not, that salvation proves false and they return to Winesburg defeated. Having grown up in a small Midwestern town myself, I can say that much of Anderson's portrayal of small town life rings true. It's unclear, however, whether he's proposing that the emotional turmoil and alienation felt by Winesburg's residents is peculiar to the experience of small town life or merely indicative of the world at large.

Winesburg, Ohio is one of America's earliest examples of modernist literature. Its influence on later modernist writers is readily apparent, most notably in the works of William Faulkner. While Anderson possesses a brilliant insight into human thought and emotion and expresses his vision in a beautiful narrative voice, most of the stories end all too abruptly and thus feel incomplete. It's a conceit of modernism to think that it's enough for the author to merely offer sketches of the way things are, without providing the reader with a satisfying beginning-middle-end plot structure. In most of these stories we're deprived of an end, and one finishes each tale with the disappointment of having just read two-thirds of a novel, only to find the succeeding pages missing. The characters all finish their stories as if frozen in some tableau vivant. Reading Winesburg, Ohio is much like wandering through a gallery of Edward Hopper paintings. You've got a pretty good idea where these people have been, but you don't have a clue where they're going.

After reading Sherwood Anderson's book about Winesburg, Ohio I came away knowing the characters as though they were my nieghbors. It's a powerful read about plain folks who struggle with their demons, whether it's thier happiness,or unhappiness. Their loves or their imaginary loves. Thier wanting of something better from life and even somtimes from death. You will enjoy the stories as they unfold about the occupants of this small town as the pages turn from story to story.An enjoyable and must read. Steve Tuers.

This is a collection of stories of people in small-town America at the turn of the last century. The book attempts to provide insight by presenting "grotesques" or caricatures of people and their lives. The major themes are loneliness and failure, and so one can imagine that the tales are not very uplifting. The book is fairly easy to read and depicts a suprising view of pre-industrial life.

For someone who grew up in a small town (pop. 1000) in southern Indiana, I immediately drew a connection with Winesburg. Anderson's portrayal of the local residents leads people to believe that small town life can have the same problems as city life.

I thought I would really enjoy this classic since I grew up in small-town Ohio. I found it very difficult to stick with some of the stories, but muddled through. Some tales were decent but they would end too soon. It is an easy read and some may really enjoy it but I did not.

Winesburg, Ohio is a book full of unhappy people. Those who are married seem especially unhappy....the women are all tall and dark, the men are all "thinkers". Tho it won the Pulitzer, it was not a great book to read. Redeeming factor--makes OLIVE KITTEREDGE look really good--those stories are also about folks in a small town, also won Pulitzer, and I thought it a better read.